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While American graffiti has become a cult symbol – a subject of books, films, media coverage, one graffiti by a Chinese tourist has become a national shame.

Will Chinese copy the US – and paint graffiti across the world? | Cartoon by Stephens on Wednesday, 29 May, 2013, 6:16am in South China Morning Post

uring and after WWII, American soldiers were parts of invading armies that warred in more than 50 countries. With the British and Russians, Americans were victorious in WWII.

Colonialism to Neo-Colonialism

After WWII, American armies waged long and expensive wars against Asians in South East Asia to impose US hegemony over former French, Dutch and British colonies.

Using a Communist bogeyman, propped by Eisenhower’s Domino Theory, American forces killed more than 50 lakh Asians (5 million) in Cambodia, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam. After the Asian Wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union, American attention has turned to the Islamic world.

Self Goal? More than international media, it were the Chinese who declared this graffiti as a ‘national’ shame. | Harry Harrison on May 27, 2013 in South China Morning Post

American Chopsuey

These American soldiers made their presence felt in countries they invaded and in those countries where American bases were set up – temporarily (like in India) or permanently (like in Japan).

American graffiti left behind at national monuments, historical sites – and on the bellies of pregnant women. Does the phallic overtones of this graffiti reveal the shallowness?

Graffiti itself goes back to ancient times. Graffiti is found in the ruins of Pompeii, on the walls of ancient Jerusalem, in ancient Egypt. Kilroy follows a long tradition, but was far more famous and all-present than any of them.

“Kilroy was here” emerged during World War II, appearing at truck stops, city restaurants, and in military boardrooms. However, the first appearances seem to have been on military docks and ships in late 1939.

“The mischievous face and the phrase became a national joke,” according to author Charles Panati. In theory, he was a soldier, probably American, who travelled all over the world scrawling his immortal phrase. Clearly, the graffiti were scrawled by thousands of different soldiers, not a single one named Kilroy.

During the Forties, Kilroy was everywhere. Panati comments, “The outrageousness of the graffit was not so much what it said, but where it turned up.” He cites the torch of the Statue of Liberty, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Marco Polo Bridge in China, huts in Polynesia, and a girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York. There were contests in the Air Force to beat Kilroy to isolated and uninhabited places around the globe.

The appearance wasn’t always of GI origin, although it was largely tied to the military services. More than once newspapers reported on pregnant women wheeled into the delivery room, with the hospital staff finding “Kilroy was here” written across their stomachs. Panati says, “The most daring appearance occurred during the meeting of the Big Three in Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945. Truman, Attlee, and Stalin had exclusive use of an opulent marble bathroom, off limits to everyone else. On the second day of the summit, an excited Stalin emerged from the bathroom sputtering something in Russian to one of his aides. A translator overheard Stalin demand, ‘Who is Kilroy?'”

SDSTAFF Mac suggests Panati is a better storyteller than a scholar, though.

Low Self Image

China is whipping itself into a frenzy.

A graffiti by a Chinese teenager, discovered by another Chinese at the Egypt’s Luxor site, was taken up with a frenzy by ‘shamed’ Chinese. While American Graffiti has become a cult symbol – a subject of books, films, media coverage, one graffiti by a Chinese tourist has become a national shame.

Much like India scored a self-goal by making itself look like a country of rapists, when in fact, it has one of the lowest rape ratios in the world.

Does international media need anything more than these self-goals by the Chinese and Indians?

SHANGHAI—Parents of a Chinese junior high school student apologized on May 25 after their son’s name and graffiti were discovered defacing a wall of the ruins of the sacred Luxor Temple in Egypt, which ignited a storm of criticism on the Internet.

“My son understands that he did a bad thing,” his weeping mother was quoted by the Xian Dai Kuai Bao, a newspaper in Jiangsu province in coastal China, as saying.

“I am asking everyone to generously forgive my son (so that) this incident will not adversely affect his future,” his father was also quoted as saying.

The graffiti, written along with the student’s name in Chinese, reads, “I came here for sightseeing.”

Another Chinese tourist, who discovered the graffiti, wrote in Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, on the night of May 24, “I tried to erase this shame by rubbing it off, but my effort was in vain.” He also posted a photo of the graffiti.

Immediately after that, one poster after another criticized the graffiti on the Internet. One comment read, “I am ashamed of the graffiti as a Chinese.” Other posters also disclosed the student’s birthday and year of birth, and revealed that he is a junior high school student in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

In the last 70 years, technology gaps in defence have increased hugely. US and Russia are far ahead from rest of the world in making arms and armaments.

One of the world’s four airworthy Zero fighters sits on the tarmac in August 2011 in California, decked out in its full Pacific War livery. (Image courtesy – ajw.asahi.com; source – Masahide Ishizuka)

big drawback that hobbled Japan in WWII was oil. Japan had aircraft carriers and fighter aircraft – but little oil. In each battle, in the decisive stages of the WWII, oil was in short supply. By the start of WWII, Japan was prepared for war, with its Zero fighters.

In the last 70 years, technology gaps in defence have increased hugely. Countries like India have decided to build their defence capability by importing the latest and the best on one hand. On the other hand, India has launched ambitious R & D projects that are getting close to world standards.

US and Russia are far ahead from rest of the world in making arms and armaments. Coming close to these countries will take decades and billions of dollars – two things that very few countries have. For instance, few countries in the world (US, Russia, UK, France, Italy) can make world-class jet engines for fighter aircraft. Even countries like Japan and Korea, with a strong electronics and industrial base depend on defence imports.

For WWII, Japan produced more than 10,000 fighters – including the famed Zero fighter.

Masahide Ishizuka, 52, a New Zealand resident originally from Tochigi Prefecture is campaigning to bring one of the four airworthy Zero fighter aircraft in the world back to Japan, where it can fly again in the skies of its homeland.

Ceaseless propaganda – the one weapon that the Desert Bloc never tires of using. 70 years after the start of WWII, the propaganda continues.

At least this Nazi was correct about Churchill. The caption: “I am the friend of all the small countries!” Winston Churchill removes his mask. A standard Nazi propaganda argument was that England used smaller nations, tossing them aside when they were no longer useful. Source and courtesy : bytwerk.com). Click for larger image.

Trade wars are, perhaps, the most serious threats to the global economic order. Because of that, they are also the least likely. So, while the current rumblings in Beijing and Washington may lead to increased frictions, even economically ignorant politicians will not do anything drastic.

Both Germany and Japan tried in the 1930s to limit unemployment and political vulnerability by maximising domestic production and restricting imports. But, since World War II, economic activity has increasingly crossed political borders. (via Mutually assured destruction).

Is this plain ignorance?

Given that Reuters is a British news agency, the propaganda motive can never be discounted. The author forgets that Germany, home of the automobile (inventors of petrol and diesel engines, and the motor car itself), Italy and Japan were significantly industrialized countries before WWII. These countries were shut out of colonial markets with high tariff barriers by Britain and France.

In India

Even after crippling tariffs, industry from Germany, Italy and Japan was able to stand up to British and French products. For instance during the Great Depression, the British Raj imposed a towering 75% duty on Japanese mill cloth to India – which was becoming highly popular. In turn the Japanese stopped buying cotton from India. British mills made a killing by then buying Indian cotton at throwaway prices.

Nothing new

Sure, Indian politicians are inept. After inheriting an India which was a ship-to-mouth economy, flat in its back, to become the fourth largest economy, is ineptitude, according to coconut-shell Dhume.

Especially, when he proposes the alternatives. China, Indonesia as nations that India can learn from. China, Indonesia – Semi-dictatorships, where the public-sector-oligarchy is going from strong-to-worse. Hardly, any examples to hold up.

But then can anything get through Dhume’s coconut shell, that he calls brains.

Examining governance records of selected ten premiere post-WWII governments across the world could throw up some surprises.

Colonial motivations

The British Raj needed to mock and diminish the Indian politician. The Indian political leader was trying to dislodge the colonial Government from their position of power. Churchill’s famous descriptions of Gandhiji as ‘that naked fakir’ and Indian politicians as ‘men of straw’ was a sentiment shared across ruling elites in Britain.

Seems like in India, too

Post-independence, this mockery of the Indian politician has only grown. This criticism, carping and mockery has no basis in fact – statistics, measurements, performance metrics. Anything at all.

The drag government’s been on the Indian story is astonishing. No government in the world’s been such a burden to a country. It’s done none of the things it’s meant to while it seems to eye private success with greed. There’s only so long this frame can hold…

Aatish Taseer, whose books and writings have been met with much fanfare, publicity and soundbites, is another one who bites into the dust of empty criticism.

If we are to examine governance records of selected ten premiere post-WWII governments across the world, Taseer’s emptiness (he is not alone) will stand exposed.

These 10 governments four from Europe (France, Germany, Italy and UK), two from South America (Argentina and Brazil) Japan and USA, China and India. Looking back at the 65 years after WWII (1945-2010), the context and strategies of these ten countries throws up some surprises. India would definitely be a part of the Top-3 anyway that such a performance can be rated.

Image source and courtesy - economist.com.

Just on what basis have other governments have done better? All that bedevils Indian governance are present in all other countries. And the answer to all that ails ‘modern’ governance, can only come from India.

Is Pax Americana like Britain was a hundred years ago? (Cartoon courtesy - mpg50.com.). Click for larger image.

Fat and lazy

Between 1875-1935, Britain was dependent on India for gunpowder, on USA and Iran for oil, on Malaya and India for rubber. British economy had grown fat and uncompetitive – unlike Italian, German and Japanese economies.

Even though Britain won WWII, their economy was a lost cause. Though Germany, Italy and Japan were losers, with their economy in shambles, they could make a brilliant recovery and vastly out-compete Britain.

The story of Middle East oil is similar for USA and West. The Welfare State, built on a diet of cheap oil, easy dollars, is now too expensive for the West to sustain. The above book extract gives an excellent snapshot of the oil industry in the 20th century.

With India’s recovery from economic devastation of colonialism now irreversible, many are standing up to claim credit.

A mercenary mass-media and a 'captive' intelligentsia distort the picture! (Cartoon by Jeff Stahler).

End of WWII

Try imagining the Bretton Woods conference. Of the less than 50 countries, three stand out.

Britain – with an empire on which the sun never set. At the end of WW2, Britain was a superpower, its huge colonial Empire intact – apart from the massive debt that it owed the US. With Germany defeated and Hitler dead, Italy in shambles and Mussolini hanged, Japan nuked into submission, Britain sat at the head of ‘high tables’ in the post-WW2 world deciding the fate of the nations – with its partner in crime, the US of A.

The wreckage that was India

India on the other hand, was an abandoned wreckage, impoverished by 100 years of colonialism, millions killed by an indifferent British Raj during the Partition of India (giving rise to a Pakistan), The Great Bengal Famine.

Poverty, hunger, disease, with social distortion and destruction on an unprecedented scale in world history stalked the land.

Regardless of accountability, contribution or acceptance, Muslims secessionists were“much too conscious of their erstwhile political, intellectual, and cultural superiority to be able to accept their new position.” Muslim leadership saw themselves as in a position to demand an “equal share of the power which would befit and be commensurate with their status as the erstwhile rulers of India.”

Cut to the 21st century

‘Great’ Britain is close to bankrupt Britain – with a gross national debt (public, private, corporate debt) equal to 500% of GDP. The decline of US is palpable – though the imagined demise is at least a few decades away. Pakistan’s implosion is happening in real-time and apparent. India has come out in the last 60 years – stronger and greater.

For every Indian success there are many, in India and abroad, who give and take credit. No one, but no one, wants to compare the Indian politician to his global peers who have presided over the fate of ‘superior’ nations. The following report by an ‘interested’ party is no secret – but a matter of prejudice and intellectual baggage that needs to examined.

Lazy minds, mercenary media (Cartoon by Don Addis.).

Seriously

India Habitat Centre has rarely witnessed such a gathering … line of cars waiting to gain entry snaked around the road and outside the Stein Auditorium, the queue of Delhi’s intelligentsia was long and winding … never before had such a huge crowd spontaneously turned up – The occasion was the Penguin Annual lecture – the speaker, Ram Guha … I looked around me and was amused to see that I appeared to be the only politician present. [for a] lecture [that]was intensely political namely “India’s political tradition — those who made it and those who did not” – also the platform to launch Guha’s new book, Makers of Modern India, an anthology of writings of those who have been, according to Guha, the primary “makers of modern India”.

[As it progressed]… an eminent writer in the audience loudly commented that the leaders of today referred to by Guha had not only failed to read these seminal works, but if they read them, could probably not understand them … this admittedly eminent writer … was entirely serious. His cynical dismissal of the entire political class shocked me to the core. What was worse, the entire audience sniggered at the remark … can [anyone] be considered to have an open mind — be it a good writer or sociologist — if he simply dismisses the entire political class with one demeaning remark.

In a democracy are only politicians corrupt? What about bureaucrats, judges, teachers, lawyers, policemen, doctors, nurses, bus conductors? Are not even some journalists and media houses and writers corrupt? What, therefore, gave this eminent writer the right to snigger crudely at senior political leaders? How did he think politicians get elected? By being stupid? In fact, electoral politics is the most intellectually and physically challenging of occupations, as any elected MP will tell you. Besides, you live in a fish bowl, get kicked out every five years and have to seek re-election … (read more via The leaders’ legacy | Deccan Chronicle | 2010-11-08; parts excized for brevity; text within […] supplied for clarity).

Behind Indian Success

Is this forward march of India an accident ? Or a happy co-incidence? Black magic, perhaps? Not forgetting credit to The West? After all, the the West is confident that modern Indian success is due to Western contribution? Of course, it begs a question as to why this has not happened in any other country.

Or why the West could not arrest its own decline?

Is the secret of India's success like the Indian rope trick?

The Wonderous NRI

We must not forget the NRI contribution – especially the Westernized NRIs (like Lord Meghnad Desai who wants to be an Indian now). Possibly, the only people who should not get any credit is are the desi, home grown Indians – and Indian politicians.

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